Quarter One Week Nine

Hi, this is Silas. This week was kind of good for me. Today we went to the beach to look at the gigantic front that is sitting off the coast of Oman in the Indian Ocean. It was awesome! We saw clouds, which were very grey. I suppose that they are full of rain!

I have made great progress this week on my toothpick bridge. It doesn't have a roof. Instead my walls are slanted to make a triangle. I just realized a problem though. Oops, nevermind, no problem.

This week was kind of just an end of quarter review and wrap up and stuff. So yesterday we went to Magic Planet. That was awesome! Magic Planet has bumper cars, a ride called the jumping star, shooting games, driving games, a jungle safari car, and there are horses, a playground, and air hockey. It is so much fun and, best of all, they have a deal on the weekdays that mom really likes because it is cheap. And it is right behind our house.

We made a movie this week called "The 13 Colonies". You can watch it at the link below:

Our cat, Jebel, has been learning in our school. She did the blog last week out of movies and, although Mom tried to load it, it wouldn't load. So we are hoping that it loads this time. This week the cat has been sick with a cold which is really gross. Sometimes she sneezes and a string of snot comes out of her nose and hangs on her face. Disgusting.

Oh, another thing I did this week was I made a movie on xtranormal. It was the first time I used that site. It is about Squanto NOT going to help the Pilgrims. He, of course, did go to greet them in real life and that probably saved the Pilgrims, but in my video, he goes hunting instead. In the movie, history meets disgustingness. Squanto goes with another Indian from the Wampanoag Tribe. They go into the forest. The fellow Indian sees a rabbit, but Squanto says he will get it later. Then Squanto says, "I've got to do something." The other Indian says, "What is it?" I will leave you with the suspense.

The link below has the movie:

What if Squanto wouldn't help the settlers at Plimoth?
by: rschiera

This week was also Trick or Treating. I dressed up as Harry Potter. Tehva was a ballerina. Tian was Pocahontas. Cady was Bloody Mary (also known as Mary Tudor or Mary I). We dyed my hair black as you can see from the picture here.

The thing I hated doing most this week was getting all of my reading summaries and vocabulary exercises into my reading lapbook. I don't like doing that lapbook at all! I never know what to write. I never remember what I read in the books that I have to read for school. Actually I do remember but it hurts my brain to pull all of that information out again.

Next week we have a school holiday! It is Eid (the one where people go on pilgrimage on the haaj) so we will have the whole week off. However, we are supposed to go camping, but I DO NOT WANT TO GO! I hate sand!

The End.

Silas

Quarter 1 Week 8

The cat was in charge of the blog this week. As the responsible teacher type I did my best to protest this but was met with such vehment opposition I decided to just let it go. The cat, who has not yet developed the ability to type, put together a video blog instead, highlighting the things she most enjoyed over the course of the week. (video blog would not load...maybe next week?)

The rationale, to which I could not object, was that the cat spends her whole day every day with us in the school room. She has become a mascot of sorts, although don't tell the kids I said that. They insist that she is a dedicated scholar.

So for the five of you who foolishly **cough cough** faithfully follow this blog, I am sorry about this. Please don't stop following us. We need all the followers we can get.

8:20 a.m. The Morning Round Up.

video will eventually be here, inshallah

Once the entire student body has reported to school, it is time for morning stretches to get our brains cranking. The cat must, as always be present for the event.

And then we get on with the day. This week was especially low key as we all recovered from various colds, cramps, and exhaustion. There were no field trips or outings as we were simply trying to drag our sorry behinds through each day. And the cat, of course, was right there with us.

Lapbooking

A nice thing to do during a low energy week is to work on the lapbooks and Tehva enjoys having control of the camera, so she was sent to chronicle her latest additions to her lapbook on New England (this green strip is her Massachusetts mini-book). Seems lapbooking is the newest hottest thing for homeschoolers and I have to admit, it does have a huge appeal. After all, it is lots of cutting and pasting--great for Tehva, plus loads of little folding things and books--a winner for Tian. Silas likes nothing at all, so he hates this as much as he hates anything else we do, although he admits to hating it slightly less than normal. And Cady is learning a good bit about the use of space, and that rulers CAN be her friends. The cat especially enjoys lapbooking as it gives her lots of little scraps of paper to chew on, which is disgusting and, therefore, cool.

Language

If you keep up with this blog, you will have noted that Tian consistently hates anything that attempts to organize her thinking into any creature that resembles logic. Language, therefore, is at the top of her hate list, right next to math. However, when the cat is around, Tian will sit and complain just a bit louder than quietly because, it she complains too loudly, the cat gets up and leaves her station. And simply giving a child a reason to stay put does incredible things to that child's ability to tolerate learning for extremely long periods.

Science

Silas was enthralled this week by Jebel's sudden awareness of the window being a view of the world and it all started with the greennhouse gas experiment we did this week. The kids placed identical water-filled jars on the sill outside the school room window, slipping one jar into a plastic bag and letting the other ride free. After an hour they measured the temperature of the water inside the jars to discover that the one wrapped in plastic had retained more heat.

soon to come...a photo of the cat drooling on the window

I read a homeschool mom's blog last weekend in which she pontificated upon her children's enthusiasm for science and how they learn so much and just love school and blah blah blah. I tried for that this week with this experiment. Unfortunately the kids thought it was cooler that the cat had suddenly found the window.

Bridge Building

We continue on with the bridge building which is astonishing to me considering they have been plugging along with the bridges for two weeks now. The cat does not enjoy bridge building at all, especially since she stabbed herself with a toothpick in the top of her mouth during the first days of bridge building. Instead, she hides in Tehva's lap while everyone else is busy building.

Reading

Tehva is busy at school. She wants to do everything, including picking up the cat, helping her

walk across the room, feeding her food to her, wiping her behind, and reading to her. In this picture she is reading to the cat which you would be able to hear if only I could get the videos to download!

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I will have to post the rest of the cat's blog later. She is really very little help, and the internet is not terribly cooperative either. Tune in next week to see if I managed to win this battle.

Quarter 1 Week 7

Tragedy struck our little school room this week as the internet misbehaved and ate every bit of the post that Tian had dictated. I suppose this is the price we pay for living in a country where internet is not an all-you-can-eat buffet. The internet often will take itself off-line without warning, as it did last Wednesday.

What's more, Tian refused to re-dictate her post. And so, we are left with a week in which we have no school blog. However, Tian determined that this was no great loss as we did nothing blog-worthy anyhow. No one took pictures or made movies. No one, as a matter of fact, did much of anything in school, and it was a tooth pull just to get them to roll into the school room each day and do the very minimum. "What is wrong with us?" Silas asked many times as the four wonder children slogged through their work.

By the weekend we were allowed to see what was wrong: Silas and Tehva both had come down with colds, which has turned the skin around their noses and mouths pink and irritated. Cady missed a day and a half for doctors' appointments and a trip to the island of Mussandam. Tian, who becomes tweenier by the day, simply melted into a stew of horomones as the week continued until by Wednesday she was bordering on impossible. It was, to say the least, not our best week yet.

However, this week is a new week--the last learning week in this quarter before a week-long review and finish up, plus portfolio assembly. Things thus far are chugging along with a bridge building project in progress, a month-long playwriting project still in the planning stages, and the usual array of activities that go with afterschool time.

Stay tuned for the regular blogger on Wednesday.

Quarter One Week Six

Ummm...this week school was great in general. Mom got us marbles and we learned how to play the game of marbles. And I farted a LOT which made me laugh all the time (hee hee hee!) and I was very stinky (hee hee hee!).

Math

This week's math was SUPER hard but I really liked learning division. By the end of this week, I had learned how to divide problems like 25 divided by 5 equals 5 (I did that without even thinking about it!). I can even do harder ones like 485 divided by 4. I did Adapted Mind this week and it was good.

I also wrote some math word problems for Tian and Cady to solve but they haven't tried them yet. Next week I will make them do those problems.

History

"I love the people and the people love me, so much that they restored the English monarchy." I got that from this website:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR1UAH_A3IA

We learned about Charles I getting beheaded on exactly the same date the Tehva was born (but like 400 years before). He was beheaded because he dissolved Parliament like four times and he kept saying that God gave him power! Then he also made the Rump Parliament, which made me laugh because the name reminded me of, well, you know (hee hee hee!).

After Charles I was beheaded, Oliver Cromwell came into power and did all the exact same things that Charles I had just done! And Cromwell wasn't even king. PLUS he forbade partying, theatre, singing anything but church songs, and all the fun stuff. But he died. Charles II came into power next and brought back ALL the PARTYING! Party anyone?

We played charades this week, which is always fun. And we started to make lapbooks about New England. That was sooooooo exciting!

Science

Here are some pictures of our field trip we took this week:

We went on a field trip with Greta and Huxley and I found a fossil! We went to take pictures of clues that would tell us the type of climate that is here in Muscat. We found lots of pokey plants with itty bitty leaves. We guessed the leaves were so small because of the lack of water. The soil was...well, there was only sand! And there was 0% water where we walked. (But later in the day...SURPRISE! IT RAINED! AND A SANDSTORM CAME!) But back to what I was saying, it was a good hike and we put all the clues together and decided that we live in an arid climate, which means more water evaporates than precipitates here. YES IT DOES! LAAAAAAA!

Writing and Language

Language was very easy this week. All I had to do was stuff with nouns. La dee da. I wrote a letter this week to my cousin Levi. I hope he gets it before August.

Arabic

I DO NOT like Arabic. I think it is really hard. I don't like to write all the complicated curls and drops that it has. (Ed note--Here are some Arabic words on signs around Muscat, like "Ruwi" and another says "Mumtaz", which means beautiful but it also the name of the kind of tea we drink. Silas hated every moment of Arabic this week, just like he says. He also hated that I put this picture into the blog--what a dweeb.) See what I am talking about? Hey! MOM! I am NOT a dweeb! (hee hee hee!)

I guess that is it for this week. There is nothing else to report.

Signed,

Silas and Mom (who was my faithful servant and typed this)

Quarter One Week 5

More than half way through our first quarter! Woohoo!

I thought this week was fun, even though the internet ran out part way through and we had to do without internet for **GASP** two whole days! I am so amazed that I survived! This week we studied the people who went on the Mayflower, called Pilgrims. They went to Plimoth. The end. Ha ha ha ha. Just kidding!

History

We made a movie about the inner light that the Quakers believe in. The Quakers believe that everyone has an inner light that lets them talk directly to God which, of course, means you can talk to God without the help of a priest or preacher. The Puritans, on the other hand, found this idea sinful and believed that they needed a preacher there to guide them in their relationship with God. Needless to say, the Puritans and Quakers did NOT like each other too much.

The Puritans also thought that they should purify the Church of England but unfortunately King James I disagreed. He liked the C of E just the way it was. So he made the Purtians' taxes go way higher than anyone else's. And did you know that King James I actually liked beef so much that he had a cow brought into his court and knighted it, "Sir Loin." That is actually true! (I think). Anyhow, the Puritans ended up leaving England to go to Holland where they could worship freely. But then they were like, "Oh shoot! Our children are losing their religion (Ed. note: unintentional REM reference). We better go to the New World!"

Okay, massive brain shift. The Dutch were in the New World, in New Amsterdam. They were, like, they had everything crazy in their town. And their cattle were running around loose. The Dutch got drunk a lot and ran around every day of the week. Even SUNDAY, which at that time was a big no-no. Then the Dutch West India Company started to get angry and sent over Peter Stuyvesant to be governor--OMG, I can never remember his name, but I can remember that he had a peg leg!

Peter Stuyvesant did a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing was he made the colonists be really good. He made them worship on Sundays, and he taxed beer and wine so that people would drink less. And he wouldn't let cattle run around wild in the streets anymore. The bad thing was, although he had built Wall Street to keep out the English, the English came anyhow and, well, it was like the wall wasn't even there. Charles II had announced in England that New Amsterdam belonged to the English and no one else. As a matter of fact, he even named it for his brother, the Duke of York! Get it? New York! (Sorry, I almost forgot that.) Then the English moved in, took over, and Stuyvesant totally let them! He surrendered his colony! So that was pretty much the end of the Dutch in New York City.

Math

I am still using Singapore Math and the Adapted Mind program together. I have done, according to Adapted Mind, almost 50% of the program for fifth grade! (Ed. note: The teacher, however, will not be stopping math once the blogger has mastered 100%-- Tian: "WHAT!?!??!") I don't like fifth grade math because I think it is really hard, especially the distributive and associative properties. My favorite thing in math so far has been learning mental math strategies. I find it so easy that I don't even have to learn it! (I am so EEEVIL!)

Language and Writing

This week I read Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, which was a fairly typical Purtian name. It was really good. I love the diaries about girls. I also read one in a previous week called, Diary of Clotee, Slave Girl.

I still don't like language as I do not like using the series, Building With Diligence but I have to do it. You know, come to think of it I wouldn't like any other curriculum either. I do like writing, though. This week I wrote a paragraph about the Titanic, which I had to plan, write, and type on the computer. On my own time I am writing a story on the computer. Maybe one of these days I will publish that.

Arabic

Today in Arabic we played bingo, which was really fun, but it was also confusing because there were words

there as well and I am not so great yet at reading Arabic. Cady, however, is pretty good at the reading, so I have to cheat off of her a lot. (Ed. note--I added this last part because I see it happen all

the time, but Tian insists that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE!) Here is a picture of some of the Arabic numbers we studied this week. Oh, Silas hates Arabic, but while I am dictating this he is in the background teaching imaginary children the numbers. I don't get him. He is so weird.

Science

We started the ozone layer depletion last week and this week we learned about the effects that that depletion is having on the world. We interviewed Greta, who is from New Zealand. She told us what it is like to live in a place where the ozone layer is so thin. She said that in the summers in New Zealand it takes just 2-5 minutes to get sunburned and that you can actually feel your skin burning as it is happening! As a result, Kiwis have to wear hats with neck guards all the time, and they have to wear sunscreen everyday. As a matter of fact, when they get up in the morning, they always apply sunscreen right away. It is just part of their routine. And if kids forget to bring their hats with them to school, they have to go home to get them and then come back to school. Ugh.

In Oman, the ozone layer must be very thick because we can be outside here for hours without burning, even though it is so hot.

Miscellaneous Comments

I am going to be Pocahontas for Halloween and I am making my own costume. And I will try to put up a picture of my costume when it is done. Tehva is going to be a ballerina and Silas wants to be Harry Pooter.

Videos

Here are the two videos we made this week. This first one is actually a commercial, but it's a little more than 30 seconds long. To make it we read lots of books about what Quakers and Puritans would have dressed like and then decided we would just have to make do with what we have here. We also read books on the Puritans and learned a little bit about the Quakers in history.

We created a story board also using http://users.altec.org/~scherrer/digi_dif/storyboard_wrap.htm. Then we filmed it and put it together.

Here is the other video, which is a visual representation of Remember Remember the Fifth of November, about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot.

That is all for this week. I am sooooooo evil! Bye!

Tian